IRAN GAINS – SAME OLD STORY – AT 7:25 P.M. ET:  While "the world" spends its time condemning Israel's raid on Gaza "peace" ships (the video tells a different story), Iran makes dramatic gains in its nuclear program.

VIENNA (AP) — Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is only pursuing civilian nuclear energy.

The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium.

Separately, the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — said Syria continues to stonewall agency reports to follow up on U.S. assertions that a facility destroyed three years ago by Israeli warplanes was a secretly built reactor meant to produce plutonium.

"Syria has not cooperated with the agency since June 2008" on most aspects of its investigation, according to the IAEA's Syria report. But it noted that Syria has admitted to small-scale nuclear experiments that it had previously not owned up to.

COMMENT:  The "sanctions" that members of the Security Council have agreed on would do little to discourage Iran, in the absence of additional sanctions by individual nations.  So far, those have not materialized.

What is lacking, of course, is any sense of urgency.  Hillary Clinton makes grand statements about the Iranian program, but they're followed by months of negotiations leading nowhere.

May 31,  2010